Firefox Nightly has always had more telemetry enabled by default. The idea isn't that you get exclusive first access to new features; the idea is that you're helping test future feature to make sure they're ready for a proper release. That includes helping Mozilla learn what works well.
If you don't want that, you can always wait for the feature to be released as normal, after it has benefited from testing by users who were open to informing its development.
In other words, this:
Mozilla never feature-gated new features behind data collection – simply downloading Firefox Nightly or Beta was enough to try out the newest features in testing.
is incorrect, as downloading Nightly or Beta is opting in to more data collection. See here, where it says:
Nightly is an unstable testing and development platform. By default, Nightly sends data to Mozilla — and sometimes our partners — to help us handle problems and try ideas.
And note that this was already the case before the new ToU, so it's probably unrelated to that.
/cc @yoasif@fedia.io @yoasif@mastodon.social
Edit: although of course the nuance here is that you can optout in Nightly and still use everything.
Yes, it sends data by default - but you can disable that. Not so for Firefox Labs.
Yeah I just realised that and was going to amend my comment - you're right, that is a difference. Still, "towards spyware" is a bit too strong for my tastes. Not to mention "turns away from open source", given that I don't think the source code for any of these features is hidden or not released under the MPL.
I guess I just won't use Firefox labs then. I'm not turning telemetry on.
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As long as Firefox is open source, I can strip the requirements and recompile it.
Can someone eli5 the open source part of this?
The article basically says Firefox isn't ditching open source but I (the author) feel like the new terms are anti-open source?
Huh? Beside the click bait title, lying about the mozzila's intention, what's the author going on about?
There's a bizarre and extremely hostile subset of users who seem to have some kind of vendetta against Mozilla and Firefox. They're not above criticism, obviously, but these people inflate literally everything with unnecessary hostility.
It's kinda letter of the law vs spirit of the law.
People got opinions of what open-source should stand for outside of just having the source code available for others to use.
I doubt Mozilla are gonna lock away the source code anytime soon, But their recent antics have rubbed a lot of FOSS people the wrong way.
That doesn't explain the hostility. Nothing Mozilla has done recently warrants anywhere near as much aggression and rage baiting as these people have been doing.
LibreWolf has been nearly ideal for me
Sadly cannot recommend it to any non tech savvy people on Mac because LibreWolf team refuses to have the app signed. This won’t help adoption rates.
Right now I can only, reluctantly, recommend Brave and maybe in the future Zen when it becomes more stable/settled.
Ah I hadn't heard about the signing issue as I use Linux. I used Brave for a few years but it's effectively just chrome with crypto ads and a homophobic CEO. I've heard good things about Zen but I've not personally tried it.
This is just FUD mongering.
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You, uh, don't understand product testing huh
A community for discussion about Mozilla Firefox.